Gold Star mom to Trump: ‘How would he feel if he lost his child?’

Karen Meredith pours Champagne while celebrating teh life of her son Lt. Kenneth Ballard at Arlington Cemetery on Memorial Day.

Karen Meredith pours Champagne while celebrating teh life of her...

Donald Trump sought Tuesday to move past his feud with the parents of a Muslim U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq, but the episode has tested his never-back-down style, forced fellow Republicans to distance themselves from his stance and provoked widespread outrage from other Gold Star families — including in the Bay Area.

“It was a visceral reaction,” said Karen Meredith of Mountain View, who lost her son, Ken Ballard, in the Iraq War in 2004. “It’s been a long time since I’ve cried because somebody hurt me saying something about my son, but I cried over the weekend. How can anyone be without feeling? How would he feel if he lost his child?”

Meredith, 62, said she had been “thrilled” as she watched the father of Capt. Humayun Khan accept an invitation to speak at the Democratic convention last week, and wanted to give him a standing ovation after he waved a pocket-size Constitution and noted that the candidate’s proposed ban on Muslims would bar people like his son from service. He said Trump had “sacrificed nothing.”

But Meredith was horrified as Trump began to challenge the father, Khizr Khan, saying he had been viciously attacked by Khan and wondering why Khan’s wife, Ghazala, had not spoken while on stage with him. Trump went further Monday, suggesting Khan was motivated to criticize him because he was focused on border security and keeping “radical Islamic terrorists” from coming into the country.

Meredith hasn’t been alone in her disgust as the spat unfolded, with push-back coming from some groups that traditionally lean conservative. On Monday, a coalition of military advocacy and support groups spoke up for the Khans, saying that all such families deserved respect from political candidates.

Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, Associated Press

Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan holds up a copy of the Constitution of the United States as his wife listens during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan holds...

A divide opened as well with GOP leaders who see Gold Star families — those who have lost relatives in military action — as politically sacred. Trump’s disparagement of the Khan family has also prompted added scrutiny of his five draft deferments during the Vietnam War — four for education, one for a medical condition that he told the New York Times was bone spurs in his heels.

Even Reince Priebus, the head of the Republican National Committee, who has solidly backed Trump during his campaign, came out against the comments about the Khans.

“I believe that these Gold Star families are off-limits,” Priebus told CNN. “It’s an unbelievable place to come from, and that’s why I think that we don’t go there and I don’t go there.” Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he disagreed with Trump and felt the views did not represent the Republican party.

Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle

Dr. Nooshin Razani, whose late brother served in the Army, is seen near her home Aug. 2. 2016 in Berkeley, Calif.

Dr. Nooshin Razani, whose late brother served in the Army, is seen...

In Mountain View, Trump’s comments led Meredith to action. She began inviting other Gold Star families to a Facebook chat group. They realized they had to do something — and decided on a letter to Trump calling for an apology.

“We feel we must speak out and demand you apologize to the Khans, to all Gold Star families, and to all Americans for your offensive, and frankly anti-American, comments,” read the letter signed by more than two dozen families.

As Meredith put it, attacking one family can lead to a backlash from others. “You don’t attack a Gold Star family without many of us getting up and getting together,” she said.

One of the people who signed the letter was Nooshin Razani, a Berkeley resident and sister of Omead Razani, a 19-year-old who died in Iraq in 2004.

“It made me feel disappointed for my children, and just kind of disgusted. I couldn’t believe someone running for the highest office would be that insensitive,” she said. “Ultimately, I feel invigorated and it lit a fire under me because I was sitting things out. Now I realize we can’t and we have to speak up, and I feel so thankful to (the Khans). It really pushed me.”

Trump has not apologized. On Tuesday, conservative Fox News host Bill O’Reilly asked the candidate whether he would have been better off ignoring Khan’s convention speech.

“Obviously there’s no greater sacrifice than you lose a son or a daughter in the way that this happened, and I understand that,” Trump said. “I was viciously attacked ... am I supposed to not have the right to at least say something back?” He told O’Reilly, “You just brought it up again, and it’s already sort of falling into the background.”

Historians struggled to find precedent for the dispute in presidential politics and campaigns.

“I can’t think of anything comparable,” Julian E. Zelizer, a presidential historian and professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said Tuesday. “It’s a whole other level to attack the parents of a dead soldier. It’s beyond what we’ve seen in the campaign trail.”

In the past, presidential candidates and sitting presidents have specifically sought to avoid any back-and-forth with these families, said Brooks D. Simpson, a professor and presidential historian at Arizona State University.

“For someone to say he’s on the side of veterans, while insulting, engaging in exchanges with the parents of a soldier who gave his life — that’s unprecedented,” he said.

Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in the Iraq War and who once camped outside of then-President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch in hopes of meeting with him, said she believes the Khan family will get through this difficult period.

“If they think what they’re doing is right, they have to go forward with it, they have to hold their heads up high,” said the Vacaville resident. “I buried my son, and they buried their son. There’s nothing worse than burying a child, and if a parent can survive that then they can survive just about anything.”